WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday said
he thinks there is no “plausible legal basis” for the U.S.
Supreme Court to strike down a key plank of Obamacare, defending
his administration’s lack of a contingency plan.

And he promised to rule on the Keystone XL pipeline before
he leaves office, although he would not say whether it will take
him “weeks or months” to determine whether the project is in the
national interest.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday said he thinks there is no “plausible legal basis” for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a key plank of Obamacare, defending his administration’s lack of a contingency plan.

And he promised to rule on the Keystone XL pipeline before he leaves office, although he would not say whether it will take him “weeks or months” to determine whether the project is in the national interest.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House released draft legislation on Friday that would give consumers more control over how the trail of data they leave behind them on the internet is used, stored and sold.

The 24-page “discussion draft” on data privacy immediately sparked sharp reaction from the technology industry, which said the proposal would hurt innovation, and also from privacy advocacy groups that said it did not go far enough.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama raised the political pressure on Republicans over immigration on Wednesday, telling young members of Miami’s Latino community that Republicans were to blame for stopping reform and urging them to make it an issue in the 2016 elections.

Obama took questions about his stalled immigration executive actions at a town hall-style event at Florida International University, which claims to be first in the nation in awarding degrees to Hispanic students. It was televised on Spanish-language network Telemundo and MSNBC.

WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. government will
allow spouses of certain high-tech foreign workers to apply for
work permits, an accommodation designed to make things easier
for families waiting in long lines for green cards.

The regulation for spouses of H-1B visas, first proposed
last year and finalized as part of President Barack Obama’s
package of executive actions on immigration, will take effect
starting on May 26.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would mean more than 100,000 border patrol, port inspection and airport security agents would be temporarily left without paychecks.

“It will have a direct impact on your economy, and it will have a direct impact on America’s national security because their hard work helps to keep us safe,” Obama said in a speech to a meeting of state governors at the White House.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Saturday began a broad sales pitch to the U.S. public about the merits of free trade deals, an area in which he faces stiff resistance from many in his own Democratic party.

Obama has said he wants to work with Congressional Republicans to finalize the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, an agreement that would stretch from Japan to Chile, covering 40 percent of the world economy.

WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – The United States accused
Israel on Wednesday of distorting its position in the Iran
nuclear talks through selective leaks, intensifying tensions
before a controversial U.S. visit by Israel’s prime minister.

“We see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking
specific pieces of information and using them out of context to
distort the negotiating position of the United States,” White
House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is set to sign an executive order on Friday aimed at encouraging companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats with the government and each other, a response to attacks like that on Sony Entertainment.

The order sets the stage for new private-sector led “information sharing and analysis organizations” (ISAOs) – hubs where companies share cyber threat data with each other and with the Department of Homeland Security.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that he was bringing back nearly all U.S. troops fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and marking a new phase in the battle to help countries “get to zero” cases of the deadly disease.

Obama said the outbreak was a “wake-up call” for the world, and that wealthy countries needed to invest to ensure that poor nations have basic health systems to detect and fight diseases.